Update: This Cane has been SOLD, and shipped to Leitchfield, Kentucky.

Cane Serial number #2006-15. Height: 34.5”

Welcome Web Surfers:If you are surfing looking for a special walking cane on the internet, go toward the bottom of this posting where you’ll find a list of canes that I have built that are ready to ship immediately. Also, there are links to several more customized canes that have already been sold to give you ideas for your own commissioned cane.

This is a cane that I built from Bird’s Eye Maple wood, heavily figured, and a laminate layer of walnut.

Several years ago I was involved in a flooring project where I reused maple flooring from an old decommissioned high school gymnasium in a small rural Kansas town. A manufacturing company bought the old school, ripped out the wood flooring, and several years later, I found myself installing it in a full house remodeling project.

So, as I was going through the huge piles of dusty strips of old flooring, once in awhile I would come across a bird’s eye maple, or curly maple, flooring board, and so I would gently push it off to the side, so that I could use it in a better way than just for flooring.

Over the years, I’ve built jewelry boxes, knife handles, and tool boxes, and used it for inlays, and all kinds of things with that wonderful maple flooring, as well as quite a few walking canes.

This cane has a tapered octagonal shaft, and is one of the more simple styles of canes that I build. Since the flooring is about 5/8” thick, I laminated a couple of maple layers together with a contrasting colored wood, such as walnut in this case.

The handle is Black Walnut.

There is a brass ferrule, with a rubber tip.

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Cane Sample Slideshow: To hear Music, click the Speaker Icon

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More Walking Sticks & Canes:If you go to my Mark DeCou Website you won’t find very many canes pictured there. I do realize that I need to invest in improving my website, but until that is accomplished, here are few more of my canes posted at lumberjocks, thanks for your patience.

You can contact these gallery stores directly and see what they still have in stock. They will ship to you if you buy something. If you prefer, you can also email me, as I keep fairly current on what is “unsold.”

I enjoy sculpting walking canes. Some folks call them Folk-Art Canes, while others call them Artisan Canes, some call them Carved Canes, while others call them Walking Sticks. There is quite a bit of argument about whether something should be called Sculpture or Carving. They could be considered Functional-Art, which is the type of work that I am usually drawn to. No matter what these canes are called, they seem to bring joy to the owners, and I have been asked to make quite a few of them in the past 5-6 years.

I started making canes on the request of a nice married couple I met on a church-building short-term mission trip to Mexico City in the early 1990’s. Several years after our trip, their son-in-law was diagnosed with bone cancer, and so they wanted to get him a specially made cane that he would enjoy using. They had heard from others that I had quit my corporate office job and started doing woodworking full-time. So, they contacted me to make his cane.

Sadly, I also built him a casket, another first for me, about a year later

Since the time I did that first Cane for Bryan, I have enjoyed the work on the canes that I have been able to make, but more importantly, the people that I have been able to meet and help along the journey. I do make a bunch of unique items and furniture, but without a doubt, I receive more correspondence and thank-you cards from cane customers than any of the other items I make, combined. So, they are fun for me to build, and I look forward to each new person and situation.

To keep a handle on all of the memories, I engrave a small serial number on each brass cane tip, and then I keep a detailed database log of each cane, customer, and situation. The list always brings me warm memories each time I scan it and remember the folks that have supported my work over the years, and vice versa.

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Still Want to See more of my work?

Start with each of these links, and they will take you to other organized lists of my other niche products: